May04

This month I am throwing caution to the wind: in the place of my normal (ahem) finely crafted Monthly Message, for May I am attempting a proper blog, as some kind of evil experiment. If nothing else, it will be a challenge. How can I make the words "Ealing" and "Council Tax" seem interesting for 31 days?
For contents of each page, click here

Last night I walked through the
centre of one of Europe's great
capitals and saw no sign of
any especial celebrations: it was
just another London Friday night
as the metropolis numbed itself after another exhausting week.

I did not really expect there to be any public commemoration of the European Union's expansion and therefore wasn't disappointed. I did try to mention it to a couple of former colleagues, but it seems that the EU, as an instituion often garners only indiffence at best . "I wish the EU would stop interfering," said a twentysomething PhD at a former workplace of mine.Asked what he found particularly oppressive about the EU, he struggled and came up with the fact that we don't really use pounds and ounces anymore. I bought another four gills of beer, and then walked a couple of furlongs, plus the odd few chains, rods and links up to the tube station.

I have been to each of the eight "eastern" counties now joining the EU and like them all very much: a European Union with Vienna but without Prague; with Majorca, but without Vilnius makes no sense to me at all. And yes, the accessions today mark the beginning of another phase in Europe's development, and not an end in itself. I do feel however, that the people of the UK are just not yet politically mature enough to fully take advantage of the opportunities ahead. I would love to be surprised, but I fear that any referendum on joining the Euro will fail, and the coming plebiscite over the proposed European Constitution will degenerate into nationalistic humbug. "Countries have constitutions" says Michael Howard "we don't want to belong to a country called Europe" is another cry.

You know, I once belonged to a university canoeing club,and that had a constitution; the UK is not even a "country" but a state with an (albeit unwritten) constitution that includes four distinct countries, and heaven knows how many nations. Let's not annoy the Cornish.

Let's just be sane and rational about this. No nation or country is going to lose its "identity" in the European framework now being built: part of the UK's sovereigty is pooled with 24 other states in a far more ordered fashion than the way in which Mr Blair has subjugated the UK's foreign policy to that of President Bush. A new constitution for the European Union will give the organisation a fair chance of proceeding with greater efficiency, enhancing the security of Europe as a whole. A popular rejection of a constitution negotiated by our governments will simply result in the existing arrangements continuing- fine for an organisation of six states, but completely inadequate for a Union currently of 25, but with at least eight more knocking on the door.

Let us try to be positive about the future and less bound by irrational loyalties of nationhood . There. I've said it. I suppose I'll be locked up in the Tower for that...

April

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When I finally got out of bed this afternoon
I decided to try and do something other than
stare at this screen for a while, so I decided
to head off to the Victoria and Albert Museum to have a look at the Vivienne Westwood exhibition. Perhaps writing a blog is peversely making me look at the time I spend messing about on the computer, creating whirling graphics of melting European flags and is thus encouraging me to go and do other things in the real world that exists out
there, or so I'm told.

Now, I have to admit that a sense of fashion is not amongst any attributes I could possibly put on a personal CV.I normally go for the "sack-of-potatoes-dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards look", so my trip to the V & A was always going to be an interesting experience.

I have to admit I found myself rather won over to Ms Westwood's way of thinking: this does not mean that I will be walking down Ealing Broadway in a basque and six-inch-high purple platform shoes; rather it was her attack on mediocrity, and her willingness to plunder the influences of centuries past that made her seem all the more interesting, and not just a mad old punk who makes clothes that hardly anyone can afford and fewer of those can actually wear. "If you wear interesting clothes," she said in a video presentation " then your life is better".

Doubtless I shall ignore that advice, but the clothes/works of art on display are an entertaining romp through her history and ideas: homage is paid to ther punk creations, including a T-shirt which engendered a prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act. I suppose she's now firmly part of whatever Establishment she feels comfortable in.

Click on Vivienne to go to
the V & A's exhibition site.
I spent a pleasant half-
hour or so in the V & A
courtyard afterwards, a
pacific haven of tranquility
in Kensington, and then went
home: my sister cooked me a vegetable bake which included some rather tasty parsnips. I had never taken to parsnips before, so that was a second revelation for the day. Well, they all count.

One last thing occurs to me
after all my enthusiasm for Ms
Westwood yesterday: in the
museum shop, some of her T-shirts were on sale:plain black with the word "SEDITIONARIES"
printed across it- a bargain at �65. A case of the Empress's old clothes, methinks.

I bought a proper digital camera today, just to prove that I have sold any soul I may have left to my computer. I had the usual panic I feel in electronic stores before I plumped for something that was not too expensive and that seem to have lots of promising gizmos and flashing lights on it.

Clanger can be seen in one of my first photos I took with it this evening. Once again, he has singularly failed to put my clothes away again. He's really going to have to buck his ideas up.

forward to May 4th!